


Face Down

by ChelseasDeadSmile



Series: Beauty From Pain [1]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, M/M, One Shot, Past Abuse, Songfic, Triggers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChelseasDeadSmile/pseuds/ChelseasDeadSmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone lives through something terrible in their lives.  Even Nasir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Face Down

**Author's Note:**

> As it says in the "Tags", there is Triggers of violence and abuse in the one-shot. So I strongly advise against reading this if you have been in an abusive relationship and haven't gotten passed it.
> 
> Song Used: Face Down by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (Lyrics changed to fit the story).
> 
> I own the band name Two Weeks From Forever.

_Hey, boy you know you drive me crazy,_  
 _One look puts the rhythm in my hand._  
 _Still I'll never understand why you hang around,  
_ _I see what's going down._

The band Two Weeks From Forever was playing on stage at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, California, and frontman Nasir Hadriba had allowed the songs that were nearest and dearest to his heart be put onto the band's EP album "The Shattered Window". The current song he was singing, called "Face Down", was the opening song he always wanted to do; the song set the tone for the entire set, and Nasir wouldn't have it any other way.

_Cover up with makeup in the mirror_  
 _Tell yourself, "It's never gonna happen again",_  
 _You cry alone and then he swears he loves you!_

Nasir had been through the beginning stages of what he thought would be a relationship that would rival the Gods themselves, but he was swiftly cut from that notion when he started having to put make up on the different parts of his body so that his best friend Chadara Mason wouldn't notice what Castus Alexander was doing to him behind the eyes of the public.

_Do you feel like a man when you push him around?_  
 _Do you feel better now as he falls to the ground?_  
 _Well, I'll tell you my friend, one day this world's goin' to end,_  
 _As your lies crumble down, a new life he has found._

Nasir knew that his eyes were watering up, he knew that the tears would start streaking down his face at any second, but he didn't want to stop at the beginning of the show just because he couldn't take the sadness and sickness he still felt after all the years he had put up with the abuse of a person who he thought loved him.

_A pebble in the water makes a ripple effect,_  
 _Every action in this world will bear a consequence._  
 _If you wade around forever, you will surely drown,_  
 _I see what's going down._

It's almost like the day when Nasir wrote that analogy that it hit home so deeply that the tears started streaming down his face, and he was forced to take a drink of water to dislodge a chunk of the emotion caught in his throat so he could continue to sing. Spartacus Redford looked at him as if sensing his best friend wasn't in the best of places, but kept playing since Nasir didn't give him the signal to stop.

_I see the way you go and say you're right again,_  
 _Say you're right again,_  
 _Heed my lecture._

Nasir knew he had to last through the set or forfeit his bands chances of success - it had been his choice to put the songs that broke him, scarred him, and made him bleed just to see the success of something coming out of the ashes of a life he had never wanted to experience.

_Do you feel like a man when you push him around?_  
 _Do you feel better now as he falls to the ground?_  
 _Well, I'll tell you my friend, one day this world's goin' to end,_  
 _As your lies crumble down, a new life he has found._

This band, this venue, the world will know about the pain that had been inflicted upon him. This band will leave a scar in this venue that will tell of the pain and suffering Nasir had felt in his short years, and the world will know that not just women are effected by abuse, but men too. When properly translated, "Gay" means "happy", but just because male relationships are called "Gay" doesn't mean they are all happily ever after. There are victim's of violence and abuse out there just like Nasir.

_Face down in the dirt,_  
 _He said, "This doesn't hurt",_  
 _He said, "I finally had enough."_

_Face down in the dirt,_  
 _He said, "This doesn't hurt",_  
 _He said, "I finally had enough."_

After the first time Chadara and her boyfriend Rhaskos Valheva had seen the bruises, Nasir had been in way deep and blamed himself for causing his boyfriend to hit him, to whip him with a belt, to nearly choke him to death, and Nasir had been okay with that reasoning. He'd convinced himself the rough sex that made him bleed every time they did it felt amazing, but Chadara and Rhaskos weren't hearing any of it because, for them, the bruises broke the camels back - to learn that it'd been going on for three years was enough to send them over the edge. Spartacus, Crixus Malloy, and Gannicus Denver had all visited the apartment that Nasir had been living in with his boyfriend at the time, and beat Castus so bad that he had to go to the hospital. When Castus got out, though, he took his anger out on Nasir which left Nasir clinging onto life as the Police arrived after getting sick and tired of hearing Nasir's screams of pain.

_One day he will tell you that he has had enough,_  
 _He's coming around again._

After his trip to the hospital that landed him in a wheel chair for six months so all of his broken bones could heal, Nasir's friends took Castus to court and showed photo's of the captured evidence they had unknowingly gotten of Nasir and his bruises as well as the photo's they'd taken while in the hospital when Nasir was in a medically induced coma to help his cranium heal from the excessive blows he'd taken to the head by a frying pan. Of course, Castus argued that Nasir had Spartacus and the rest of his friends come over to beat him, but, besides medical records that said he sustained only minor bruising and abrasions, the Judge convicted Castus to 40 years of Prison with no elegibility of getting released early. The news had lifted the spirits of everyone..., but Nasir.

_Do you feel like a man when you push him around?_  
 _Do you feel better now as he falls to the ground?_  
 _Well, I'll tell you my friend, one day this world's goin' to end,_  
 _As your lies crumble down, a new life he has found._

_Do you feel like a man when you push him around?_  
 _Do you feel better now as he fallss to the ground?_  
 _Well, I'll tell you my friend, one day this world's goin' to end,_  
 _As your lies crumble down, a new life he has found._

Another drink of water to blast through the emotions in his throat, and another tear trailing down his face at remembering all he'd lived through, all he'd accomplished, and all that he now had thanks to something so terrible no one should ever experience it.

_Face Down in the dirt,_  
 _He said, "This doesn't hurt",_  
 _He said, "I finally had enough."_

Nasir bowed to the crowd in thanks as the first song came to a close, but the set wasn't over yet. He had many smiles and tears still yet to shed, and, he knew, that the man standing at the side of the stage was just the dose of confidence he would need to get through it.


End file.
